We Are Here, 2018
Continuous VR animation, mono sound (1 minute 38 seconds loop), Digital-printed fabric, ready-made tent frame, a chair, a playlist of 33 songs (sounds for the public space)
Installation size: 1550 x 1550 x 2200 (mm)
We Are Here is a temporary, private place for an instant and intimate relationship in a public, open place. Created specifically for the site, this work invites the public in the White City Place into a small tent for only one person at a time. Inside the tent, there is a chair to sit on and a VR headset to dive into a virtual headspace that is relaxing, contemplative, meditative, and fleeting. We Are Here is an attempt to create mental solidarity by sharing universal questions and friendly, particular declarations.
[] White [City] Cube [], 2018
Group exhibition
White City Place, London, UK
Curated by Mina Song
Artists: Naky Hwang, Laura Robertson, Veronika Neukirch, Inge van Genuchten, Maggie McGrath
1 November 2018 to 8 November 2018
The lobby playlist is mostly curated with pop music to give a more public sense to the space through sound, in contrast to the intimate voice and sound effect of the private tent. The playlist features songs with the word ‘here’ in their titles, filling the space with lyrics that emphasize the idea of being present. This creates a territory of sound that people can engage with, and also suggests the idea of a private sound space within a public sound space.
1
You walk through the plaza without needing any permission. Your trajectory is a sum of your temporal occupation of the plaza, and every second you step on it, you occupy the spot and fill the space with your existence. As you stop and stand still, strangers pass by, and you may feel alienated. The alienation makes you blurry, and you try to find evidence of your presence. Every private reality is a pure abstraction, and we are each other’s abstraction. It is an unknown realm to be discovered or neglected. We are all strangers to each other, and we are passersby. Can we call ourselves “us”? What do we need to do to share each other’s reality to make it a mutual reality? We form our thoughts and feelings visible or listenable by using the frame agreed with others. Questions arise: How do we interpret each other’s abstraction? How are we associated? How do we associate ourselves? How can each person’s reality be shared with others? How is the shared reality written as a certain “history”? You speak out to begin a conversation. We become the evidence of each other’s reality and witnesses of each other’s presence. You exist because we share this moment, and it will be written as memories.
2
We Are Here makes intimate relationships with each viewer. It shares memories and builds a history between the viewer and the work, as well as between viewers.
3
In a public open space, there is a small tent, a temporal room for intimacy where only two individuals, the viewer and the voice, are in a virtual reality. They start their conversation to share empathy. Every conversation is a ritual, and in the process of the ritual, we trace every conversation from before and enlighten ourselves about others and their world. The tent is a sacred place to explore each other’s chasm, and the relationship is born from it.
4
Our relationship supports our reality.
The components used in Five Pages VR, such as walls and doors, were dismantled and reassembled to construct the tent and VR animation of We Are Here, which represents the logical and illogical nature of the mind space simultaneously.
